Posts in Category: damselflies
Of Waxwings and Powdered Dancers: Life and Death in the Grass
I have wondered, often, why, with so many dragon and damselflies in residence at Quest Pond, there are not more birds. Of course maybe I just answered my own question, in reverse. Maybe there are so many dragon and damselflies at Quest Pond because there are few birds there. ?? Still, I was not surprised to see a couple of largish birds swooping over the far end of the pond the other day…I was more surprised to see what they were when they came up to the end of the pond where I was. Cedar Waxwings.
There were three, and they set up in an exposed medium-sized ornamental maple at the edge of the pond, and flew out to take bugs just off the ground, then up to the overhanging branches at the edge of the forest that starts 250 feet from the pond’s edge on that side. Then back again. Back and forth, taking insects on about every other swoop. On the perch they were on high alert all the time, watching air above the grass for prey.
Cedar Waxwings are fascinating, and beautiful birds. The silky feathers, the bright colors, the black mask, the big bold eye…what is not to like? Several times as I maneuvered around to get photographs, the Waxwings came within inches of me on the wing. It was exciting. I now realize that my passage through the grass was stirring up the prey, and facilitating their hunt.
What they were catching were Powdered Dancers. I had noticed, and even photographed, these strange damselflies over my days at the pond. They are everywhere in the grass and trees around the pond…by far the most numerous single species. They flutter…they stumble…through the air in weak flights of a few yards at a time. When you compare their flight to, say, a Familiar Bluet…which flies like a high powered, laser guided, helicopter…wings a blur, forward, backward, up, down…effortlessly moving in perfectly straight lines to its goal…you could be forgiven for thinking the Dancers are not damselflies at all. If you get close enough for a photograph (or even a good look) though, you see that they are unmistakably damsels…if rather dull ones.
Most of what I see are the females, and all of them are Powdered Dancers. I have only found a few males. They seem to keep closer to the water, low in the vegetation right at the edge, and I have not see a single one in flight.
Which, of course, is just as well for them when the Cedar Waxwings are in attendance.
There are, in fact, so many Powdered Dancer females around the pond that I do not fear the health of their population if the Cedar Waxwings take a few…on every other pass. It looks to be hard work for the Waxwings for minimum reward (the Dancers are not very big). In fact, I have not seen the Waxwings since that day, so very likely they decided there were easier pickings else where…some fruit tree or berry bush coming into season maybe. Still the drama was very interesting to watch while it was on…and both the Cedar Waxwings and the Dancers have their own unique attractions.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1 EV exposure compensation. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Quest Pond, Pondhawks, and other wonders for Sunday!
As I mentioned yesterday, my mother-in-law introduced me to a new little pond this week. It is your standard industrial drainage pond, part of the drainage system for a small industrial park, augmented by the fact that the whole facility was built on a pad of fill in more or less wetland and the water has to go somewhere. It is the last in a series of ponds and French drains on the property and it is remarkably healthy for a drainage pond.
The thin boarder of reeds and other water plants along the edge, the grassy verge, the exposed rocks and the gravel path around the pond, and the backing of trees and shrubs, make it ideal Odonata habitat, with easy access for photography as well…and indeed it is alive with dragon and damselflies. The number of species is impressive, but the number of individuals, for Southern Maine, is even more impressive. In several visits over the past two days I have seen:
Green Darner (15-20 at all times over pond and the grassy verge)
Eastern Pondhawk (both male and female in large numbers, 30 or more of each)
Twelve-spotted Skimmer (about the same numbers as Green Darners)
Widow Skimmer (many males and one female so far)
Common Whitetail (males only, and only two that I have seen)
Black Saddlebags (5-10, but very aggressive, and very present)
Blue Dasher (30 or more, and a few so small I am trying to make them into Elfin Dasher or Blue Dragonlets)
Eastern Amberwing (half a dozen)
A single female White-faced Meadowhawk
And one spectacular, and very red, Calico Pennant.
Then you have the damsels:
Azure Bluet for sure.
Familiar Bluet
Orange Bluet (I think)
Eastern Forktail
Slender Spreadwing
And bunches of sprites down on the floating vegetation that I have not begun to sort.
It is an Odonata lover’s feast! This is not a big pond…so watching this man dragonfies over the water at any given time is like watching a soccer match with no goals and no rules. When I close my eyes to sleep at night, my inner vision is full of darting shapes against the light.
I was especially delighted to find a newly emerged Green Darner on Friday. You never get a chance to photograph a Green Darner…oh, maybe a female hung up waiting on a mate, or a mating wheel…both of those I have from California…but not an individual Green unless they are newly emerged and not yet ready for flight.
And the Eastern Pondwalks are rapidly becoming one of may favorite dragonflies. Both male and female are striking in their own ways. The male in the lead image shows off the green face and the subtle blue pruinescence (powdery frost) covering the green body, while the female, without the pruinescence. is exactly the same shade of green as my electric scooter.
This pond is also the first place I have seen Dragonfly cases…the shells left when Dragonflies emerge from the last larva stage. The Green Darners climb high up on reeds or bushes for the transformation, and the shells remain attached to the reed by those strong legs until a sufficiently powerful wind knocks them loose. When I first saw them, I could not imagine what in the world kind of bug they were! With the low sun of late afternoon behind them they have a bizarre (maybe a bit creepy even) beauty of their own.
You will be seeing lots more of the Odonata wonders of Quest Pond over the coming days, I am sure.
And for the Sunday thought. If someone had told me a year ago that the highlight of my 2012 summer would be the discovery of new drainage pond at an industrial estate…
Well, actually I might not have found it that hard to believe given my past experience and what I know about myself, but it does sound unlikely on the face of it.
And, of course, except for the dragonflies and damselflies I would probably not have given Quest Pond a second look. just another drainage pond. And think of what I would have missed!
That is the thing about being awake in the world. Here I am at almost 65 years old (August 14th) and still learning…still finding new stuff to feed the wonder and the delight of being alive. Me and my Pondhawk green electric scooter pulling up to the pond on a sunny afternoon, with my white beard and with my camera on my hip and my Tilly hat hung down my back behind my emerald green helmet…must be quite a sight. But that’s okay. I am having fun.
And it is not like I am finding anything new…all these bugs have been seen and even photographed…by people who know a lot more about them than I do…people who have devoted, or are devoting, their working lives to getting to know everything there is to know about Odonata. I depend on them for what little I know. But, the fact is, this is all new for me…I have never seen and never photographed these bugs…this peculiar beauty…so it fills me with the delight of discovery.
And I think that is the key to being awake. I think our spirits require a constant diet of discovery…I think we are driven to keep exploring this world, these creatures that share it, ourselves, those we know and those we love…to find the newness in it all…the new every day…to find the beauty. I think we are driven, I know I am driven, to share it in these words and photographs. It is my spiritual act. It is the action of my spirit, to bring Quest Pond and Pondhawks and empty dragonfly cases to your attention this morning, confident that those who are in touch with the same spirit, the loving spirit of creation, the spirit of all that is new and all that we can discover…will find the delight in them…will see the beauty…will experience the love. Happy Sunday!
Is it Love? Northern Spreadwings on a Pond. Happy Sunday!
Down at the ponds on Back Creek yesterday on my photoprowl, there were lots of Northern Spreadwings, and several mating pairs. It was a still day, with subdued light..patches of sun but mostly clouds…waiting for a font to arrive…and the reflections on the pond were lovely. There is a lot going on in this image. The surface tension dimples around the stems of the delicate yellow flowers are fascinating. I think the deep one under the damselflies is caused by the weight of the flies on the adjacent stem. Their weight is pushing water “up” the stem and it is flowing into the dimple next to it, forming a small vortex with is pulling the dimple deeper. That is my theory anyway. Whatever is causing the effect, it adds visual interest and beauty to the image.
Then, of course, you have the damselflies themselves, perfectly mirrored in the still water for a shape that is simple in its apparent complexity…once the eye sorts it out. Finally you have the surface of the water, laced with what might be spider webs, or lines of pollen, or underwater vegetation…whatever…they add texture to pale silver-blue and delight the eye. All in all, this is an image I could look at a long time.
It is not perfect. It was taken at the full reach of my SX40HS…1680mm equivalent, with the digital assist of the 2x tel-converter function. The digital tel-converter works really well on highly detailed subjects like birds or close-ups of dragonflies…but when, as here, you have large areas with little detail, the digital artifacts are fairly apparent. I used some noise reduction in Lightroom, but if you were to blow the image up too large it would basically fall apart. Too large is say, to fill a 24 inch screen or larger, or to make a print at 11×14 or larger. I know the limits of my camera…but still…I would not have gotten the image at all with any other rig (can you see me on my electric scooter with DSLR and enough lens to reach this shot?). I might have come close with a very heavy crop, but that would have left me with about the same image quality. So I am happy to view the image at “regular” sizes and enjoy.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1680mm equivalent. f5.8 @ 1/640th @ ISO 400. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness. And I did crop it for composition and apply the noise reduction.
And for the Sunday thought:
I never took as many local images as I have since starting my Pic 4 Today blog, can it be…four and a half years ago…and I have never worked my local patch as hard as I have these past months when I am on “travel restriction” in my job…all my summer trips are canceled. If I want to take pics, it has to be fairly close to home. And on my electric scooter (my primary photoprowl transport in this summer of car complications) with its range of 10-12 miles round-trip, and I find myself visiting a few local locations over and over…and enjoying it. It is surprising the range of photographic interest such a small radius around my home can provide. I am loving it.
My fairly recent interest in photographing Odonata has helped, of course. It gives me motivation to go back to the ponds today, since there may be new dragonflies and damseflies that were just not there yesterday. But the real delight is finding images like this one…that transcend the subject to create a thing of beauty in itself. It might be the grand landscape of the Kennebunk Plains under stacked cumulous clouds, or it might be the patterns the high tide as made of the tall marsh grass, or it might be a Song Sparrow on a branch with a bug…or it could be pair of mating spreadwing damselflies reflected in a pond…but just about every day I find one image that makes me say “I love that!” That image touches my center of delight. You see there, I have just defined at least the surface level of love. We love what delights us.
Of course, we know that beyond delight, love must move us to commitment…to commitment to the good of what delights us. Love that does not move us to serve and preserve what delights us, is not love. Ultimately love that does not move us to delight even in the unlovely is not love, according to the best example we have been set in God. Hence the question mark in the title today. It is a challenge as much to me as anyone else, and, honestly, an open question in my life. Is it love? Is that what I see in Northern Spreadwings reflected in a pond. Is that what I am finding as I work my local patch these days?
Time will tell.
Northern Broken-dash on Northern Blazing Star, Kennebunk Plains
Happy Sunday!
My little electric scooter and I took our longest trip to date yesterday…from the house to the Kennebunk Plains, about 13 miles round-trip. That is the absolute limits of its range, at least up and down hill and carrying my considerable weight. I got back under power, but I was down to about 8 mph at the end. 🙂
I wanted to try for the Plains in part to test the limits of the scooter, but, of course, in part to see what was happening on the Plains. I have written about the Plains before, but essentially they are sand plains, kept open as kind of tall grass prairie, well out of place in forested Southern Maine, by a combination of natural wildfire (now managed) and soil conditions, and home to several endangered species. Grasshopper Sparrow, Clay-collared Sparrow, and Upland Sandpiper all reach range limits on the Plains, but it was first protected, by the Nature Conservancy, because of the presence of the Northern Blackracer snake and Northern Blazing Star wildflower. Management and ownership of most of the property has now been turned over to the State of Maine, and lumped together into a larger conservation area that embraces almost all of the habitat.
The area where Route 99 crosses is known locally as the Blueberry Plains, and it is still about the only place in Southern Maine where you can fill a bucket with wild low-bush blueberries. Picking is allowed during the month of August, but I saw a few people (who apparently believe that the law does not apply to them) picking yesterday. These early berries are supposed to be for the wildlife. Of course maybe these folks just did not read the numerous signs to that effect.
The Northern Blazing Star was just coming into bloom yesterday, but I could see that the show should be spectacular in another week or two. Lots of plants, tall and well grown, covered in buds about to open. The one in the image is only about half open, but already it had attracted a Northern Broken-dash Skipper, who was extracting nectar…sipping nectar…from down deep in the flower.
The other thing I was looking for, of course, was dragonflies. There were a few, but they were flying high yesterday and not perching. I did hike down to the pond on the backside of the Plains along Cold Brook, where I found a female Common Whitetail (a first for me, and pictured here) and a newly emerged Widow Skimmer, along with a few Ebony Jewelwings haunting the stream where it leaves the pond.
The most common Odo at the Plains yesterday was some kind of female (I think) damselfly of the Bluet variety. The female bluets are mostly all similar enough so it is not safe to make an id without a specimen in hand, and way more knowledge than I have.
And we will return to the Blazing Star for the final image. This one with one of the smallest metallic bees (or hover fly maybe) that I have ever seen.
I will, of course, be going back to the Plains some Saturday or Sunday afternoon soon, to catch more of the Blazing Star show, and maybe find a few perched Meadowhawks. 🙂 but for now, the Sunday Thought:
My tag line on Google+ is “kind of walking the line where technology and spirituality meet”. By that I mean that I am pretty much a geek when it comes to technology. I like camera tech, computer tech, tablet tech, phone tech, and even electric scooter tech. I want stuff that works…and it has to work because, maybe beyond geekdom, I actually do use the tech. I take pictures and video, I record sounds, I write words…I process the same on the computer…I show it off on my tablet…I tell people about it on computer, tablet and phone. And I get to the places, these days, at least locally, on my electric scooter. So I am geek who actually uses the tech for what it was made to do.
But way beyond that, nothing I do is complete until it is shared. Yes I show my stuff to friends and family, but I also blog (here and elsewhere), I twitter, I Facebook, I Google+. To me the miracle of modern technology is how easy it makes it to both create and share content…to catch your bit of the world and life, make a bit of meaning out of it, and broadcast it to a, relatively speaking, wide audience. Almost 27,000 people have me in circles on Google+. That is a small number compared to the super-stars of the internet, but it is a huge number compared to the number of people I could have touched even 10 years ago (without being noticeably rich, famous, or powerful).
And that is where the spirituality comes in. It is, I am certain, a spiritual act to catch your bit of the world and life, and to make a bit of meaning out of it. It is, I am certain, a spiritual act to share whatever meaning we make. And, for me, the more I share, the more certain I become that there is only one Spirit that gives meaning to all of us, and that my only value in life or in the world, comes from touching that Spirit, and sharing that Spirit. Personally, my experience has lead me to identify that Spirit with what most of us call God, and specifically with the God of love who we know, who we can come to know, in Jesus Christ. That is my experience, and, for me, it gives a whole new layer of meaning to what I make of the world and life.
So I take a moment, each Sunday, as I continue my walk along the line where technology and spirituality meet, to celebrate the Spirit that moves us all…with digital images and word-processed words…on a computer, through the internet, and out to you…so you can experience a bit of the meaning I made of a Northern Broken-dash Skipper sipping nectar from a Northern Blazing Star on the Kennebunk Plains. 🙂
Ebony Jewelwing, Emmon’s Preserve. Happy Sunday!
I have been enjoying getting out most days on Froggy the Scoot (my frog-green electric scooter) on short lunch-hour and after-work photoprowls and dragonfly hunts, but some places are just beyond the range of the batteries in Froggy. Emmon’s Preserve, along the Batson River beyond Cape Porpoise (and managed by the Kennebunkport Land Trust) is just such a place. At something over 8 miles one way, it has to wait for a Saturday when I have a car available (rare in these days of driving-to-work daughters). It takes some planning.
I did manage a pilgrimage to Emmon’s yesterday, in hopes of finding the Ebony Jewelwings in flight, though it is a few weeks earlier than I photographed them there last year. The Batson flows down through mixed forest over a series ledges…little waterfalls and rapids…alternating with deep pools in the Preserve, so it is ideal Jewelwing habitat, and indeed, the male Ebonys put in an appearance soon after I arrived, as the sun worked its way through early clouds and the branches of the overhanging trees. Oddly I did not see a single female yet. I will get back there in the next few weeks to try to video some of the mating behavior.
There are few damselfies so striking as the Ebony Jewelwing. Jewelwings are large (comparatively speaking) broad-winged members of the Odonata family (damsel- and dragonflies), and carry their intensely colored wings vertically above the body most often when perched. They fly much more like butterflies than dragonflies, with a lot of flop and flutter, in short flights from perch to perch, and in even shorter flights as they flycatch from perches. It takes a lot of mosquitoes to keep a a hunting Jewelwing in flight, and, all things considered, I am very much on the side of the Jewelwings. 🙂
In the Ebony, the large black wings that give them their name are spectacular, but no more so than the metallic body flashing in the sun, most often an intense emerald, but sometimes, in certain lights, electric blue.
There is a level of intensity to the green that the camera just does not catch…though some of the shots from yesterday come as close as I have come.
Since the Ebony Jewelwings tend to return to favored perches even after flycatching it is easy to come back from Emmon’s, as I did, with way too many images…but they are, I think, worth the effort…even when it involves planning around drive-to-work daughters.
And for the Sunday thought: While I certainly see evidence that some process similar to that described by evolutionists is operating in nature, it will never be enough, to me, to explain the Ebony Jewelwing.
The Ebony Jewelwing is just too much fun…too whimsical, too utterly beautiful in such unlikely ways…for me to believe that it is the result of any process that is based on random chance and natural selection, no matter how long you give the process to work. I mean, for a simple little mosquito eating machine, or even organism, the Ebony Jewelwing is certainly overly ornate, well beyond any idea of practical functionality…delightful in a way that requires intelligence and a larger view of existence to appreciate, or even to imagine…or that is the way I see it.
I don’t need to go to nature for evidence that there is a creator (though I enjoy doing so)…the knowledge that there is a creator, and one who is loving all we are and all we know into existence, is inescapable in a relationship with Christ…but if I did need more evidence, then the Ebony Jewelwing would be pretty much enough, all by itself, for me. Happy Sunday!
7/1/2012: The Dragon Ponds. Happy Sunday!
As I have mentioned before, the Kennebunk Bridle Path is an old, abandoned trolley line that runs from Kennebunk to Kennebunkport within site of the Mousam River…a reminder of a gentler age of tourism in the Kennebunks. Today it runs through large sections of Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge and Kennebunk Land Trust Conservation lands. It is mostly used by joggers, bicyclist, and dog walkers, but it provides easy access to some very rich habitat along the river for those of us interested in such things.
Since discovering the joy of watching dragon- and damselflies, almost exactly a year ago this week, I have a new reason to explore the Bridle Path. On either side of where it crosses Route 9 near the Mousam bridge, it runs through marshland with lots of small ponds and pools. It takes a very high tide to flood the marsh (though it happens on occasion) so the water in these ponds and pools is mostly fresh. And they are surrounded by marsh grass standing in a few inches to a foot of water on a very spongy bed. Along the rise of the Bridle Trail, and in the forest edge behind the marsh, larger bushes and small trees provide perches. It is an ideal dragon- and damselfly hatchery, and provides the emergent adults with an excellent hunting ground. Now that I am paying attention, I have seen dozens of species there already this spring and summer.
So I have taken to calling one particularly rich area, where a small stream runs through the marsh and under the Bridle Path, the dragon ponds. “I am off on my scooter to the dragon ponds,” I say to my wife, and she knows just where I will be. It is 2.2 miles one way (with a quarter mile walk at the end), so it is an easy ride on Froggy the Scoot. (I can ever ride right to the pools along the Path, but mostly I walk in from Route 9.) Froggy (due to the neon green color), is seen here parked by the ponds yesterday (which are, believe me, out there in the grass). I actually bought Froggy the Scoot to be able to get to the ponds more often.
The lead photo is a female Widow Skimmer. I have seen the female several times now, but I have yet to find a male.
By far the most abundant dragonfly in the Ponds is the Seaside Dragonlet. This is a tiny dragonfly by dragonfly standards…most individuals are less than inch long. They perch a lot, compared to other dragons, so they are relatively easy to photograph. This is a female, and a male and female in tandem follows.
There are also damselflies. The most common, by far, is Eastern Forktail. What we have in the next photo is a closely related Citrine Forktail, the first I have seen at the Dragon Ponds.
Next we have a Four-spotted Skimmer, almost as common as the Seaside Dragonlets, and certainly the most common of the bigger dragons.
And I will follow that with another Skimmer, this time the Twelve-spotted Skimmer. They have emerged within the past few days, and are already present in some numbers.
The real prize yesterday, though I don’t yet have a fully satisfying image, was several Halloween Pennants Painted Skimmers patrolling the marsh (Ed note: still learning!). These are strong flyers, very orange in the sun, who rarely perch, so I spent about a hour and a half watching and waiting. I had given up several times and tried to get back on Froggy the Scoot to go home, only to have one fly tantalizing close and tempt me back to the edge of the marsh. One did finally perch within photo range…but by then the wind was up and the dragonfly picked such a high perch in the marsh grasses that, with the wind wiping the grass, it might almost as well have still been flying. Still…it is a magnificent dragon!
All this in a few hours at the Dragon Ponds.
And for the Sunday thought. As I stood watching the Halloween Pennants Painted Skimmers patrolling, following a relatively predictable pattern over the marsh, always out of reach, I found my self willing them to perch! I came as far as muttering it under my breath like an incantation. “Perch. Please perch.” “Go on. Perch right there!” “Please.”
I was not under any illusion that my plea would effect the dragonflies, even if I spoke out-loud. Dragonflies clearly have business of their own which has nothing to do with me or my desire to photograph them. I will admit to getting very wet feet trying to reach a pool in the marsh were they seemed to congregate at one point, but chasing dragonflies on the wing is even more futile that asking them to perch.
No, I know who I am addressing. My mutters are not a plea to the dragonflies, but a prayer to the spirit that moves in both them and me. I am asking for a blessing, plain and simple, knowing I don’t deserve one and that I can’t earn it no matter how patient I am. Dragonflies will fly, unless, of course, they perch. When this one did, and I finally got the camera to focus on it while it clung to the waving grass, and I shot of a few bursts of images, it was purely a gift, and I was impossibly thankful.
It made my day. It sustained me when Froggy the Scoot ran out of battery half way home. it kept a smile on my face while I sweated the scooter up the final little hill and across the yard. It blossomed to an irrepressible grin when I got the images up on the laptop and saw I had a few keepers.
I know I am blessed to have the Dragon Ponds within reach. I have been especially blessed by a perching Halloween Pennant Painted Skimmers. It is not world peace, or an end to hunger, I know, but it makes me happy, hopeful, full of quiet joy. This is, I think, a good thing. Happy Sunday from the Dragon Ponds.
6/18/2012: Bluets on the Prairie
There were Bluets pretty much everywhere I went among the Potholes and Prairies of central North Dakota. I am not advanced enough (and may never be) to distinguish Boreal from Northern from Prairie from Familiar, etc. etc. as nine species occur around the wetlands of the high prairie, and they all look pretty much like the image above. This shot is from the edge of Mud Lake, on Chase Lake National Wildlife Refuge.
The second image is a mating wheel from another small lake at Chase Lake NWR.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. Both shots at 1680mm equivalent field of view from about 5 feet (that is 840mm optical zoom plus 2x digital tel-converter). f5.8 @ 1/500th and 1/400th @ ISO 100.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
6/1/2012: Dragons down by the River
Yesterday I spent an hour or so down in the marshes beside the Mousam River, where the Kennebunk Bridle Path passes through, photographing dragon and damsel flies. There was one small oval pool, maybe 4 feet by 3 feet, that was attracting a lot of attention, but at any given time looking out over the marsh toward the wood, you could see a dozen dragonflies in flight. The two largest, and therefore most visible, species were the Common Baskettail, Four-spotted Skimmer shown in the first three images, and the Hudsonian Whiteface. Whiteface dragonflies are mating right now, and there were several mating wheels flying over the marsh. With patience, eventually most dragonflies, especially during mating season, will light long enough for a photograph. The trouble is, you very often run out of time before the dragonfly. The 4th and 5th images are a Hudsonian Whiteface mating wheel.
Of course, if you are photographing dragonflies you are watching the marsh closely, and sometimes you are rewarded with a damselfly. Damselflies are much more difficult to spot, as they fly lower, often weaving among the reeds and grasses, they are considerably more delicate, and most of them perch with their wings folded back along their bodies. Even when you spot one land in long marsh grass, it is sometimes impossible to see them with the naked eye from any distance. Getting them in the frame and in focus is a real challenge.
The 6th image is a Scarlet Bluet [much as I would like it to be…it is much more likely a] female Eastern Forktail that visited the pool I was watching for only a few moments. It did light long enough for a pic. Number 7 is a male Eastern Forktail. The Eastern Forktail is much easier than most damselflies to find and photograph, since that turquoise tail tip flashes like lightening in the grass. 🙂
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. These were all taken with the full optical zoom (840mm equivalent field of view) plus the Canon’s 2x digital tel-extender function for the equivalent of 1680mm. They are hand held shots, which is surely a testimony to how good the Canon image stabilization is. If I were working with any other camera and lens combination, I would have to be a lot more patient than I am. I can reach dragonflies and damselflies with are simply beyond the range of most camera rigs. And you can see that the auto-focus on the SX40HS does an excellent job of isolating the bugs, even deep in grass.
They are also all on Program, letting the camera adjust shutter speed, aperture, and ISO. Shutter speeds were between 1/320th and 1/500th and the ISO was 100 on most shots. They are all wide open at f5.8.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.